Friday, March 3, 2023

Blog # 14

February 27- March 3

Student Led Conferences are next week March 9-10. I would love to meet with you and your child. 

Please use CBE's system to book a conference time. 

"Heart Words" 

   In grade three, students learn high frequency words (words that come up often in reading) by focusing on the parts of the words that have an expected letter sound or pattern. In many cases the entire word can be sounded out through these familiar letter sounds and patterns. For example the word "she" can be decoded by using the familiar digraph s-h says "sh" and the long "e" at the end says its name. However, many high frequency words have parts that "do not follow the rules" and are spelled in a way that would not be expected. High frequency words that are irregularly spelled are called "Heart Words" because some part of the word must be explicitly taught and "learned by heart."  For example the word "from" has four sounds. Three of these sounds are spelled in a way that is expected. The only sound that does not follow the rules and must be "learned by heart" is the "o" making a "u" sound. During the learning process,  teachers and students will often place a heart symbol above or below the word to indicate that this part must be memorized or "learned by heart".

Photo credit: "Heart Words: A Better Way to Teach Sight Words"

Grade Three Heart Word Wall